An opportunity for women to step up and to lead the game
Date:
“Duangporn ‘Bo’ Songvisava, chef and owner of the Michelin-starred Bo.lan restaurant and Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2013, is one of the businesswomen affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite all the obstacles and difficulties, she illustrates her never-give-up attitude to overcome the coronavirus and economic crisis.”
- Could you please introduce yourself?
I am Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava, the co-owner of Bo.lan, a Thai restaurant in Bangkok. The restaurant has existed for 10 years and I’ve been a chef for 15 years. I am turning 40 this year. I hold a Master’s Degree from Griffith University’s Hotel Management School and took a business degree in Restaurant and Catering Management.
I used to work in London and came back to Bangkok 10 years ago to open Bo.lan.
- What are the challenges you have been facing since the outbreak started? How does COVID-19 impact your business?
One of the biggest challenges I’ve been facing since the outbreak started is not being able to run my business as normal and having to cut down my staff. I usually have 75 people for my two restaurants, Bo.lan and Earth. We stopped operations for Earth for the time being to only run Bo.lan. We kept only the key staff from both restaurants to work at Bo.lan during this situation. The others have been put “on hold.” For now, we are roughly 15 people working full-time.
It’s very hard to tell people that I can’t afford their salaries… it’s the hardest thing so far. Knowing that they count on me, that they will struggle, and that they will want their jobs back once the outbreak is over, I have to keep my business healthy as much as I can.
With this situation, we have to think outside the box, so we started a delivery project quite early on. We launched it one week before restaurants were shut down, and here comes another challenge: We’ve never dealt with this kind of operation before. Everything is different, everything is digital, we’ve had to use QR codes to pay, online services … the whole standard of operations has been impacted and we are still working to understand things and choose the right direction.
There are two sides to this: adopting digital tools, and developing a delivery service. I am usually quite conservative and reluctant about take-away, delivery and online orders. In a way, I can say this forced me to undergo a real disruption.
We face different challenges every day and come up with different solution. If it doesn’t work, we come up with an alternative. We have trials and errors every day. The learning curve is currently very steep, which is great.
We had been talking about launching a digital campaign for a year, and it was on hold until now. As for delivery, I was usually against it because I can’t control the quality. If you come to eat at the restaurant, I can manage the situation. I know what’s happening at the table and I can fix any issue straight away. For take-away, it’s a different story, as it’s much harder to correct your mistakes.
I think it is sort of cool for me, because if you were to lock me in a room for 14 with nothing to do, it would make me crazy. So it’s a good challenge to have my mind working, learning to look at things differently and also finally embracing digital platforms!
In the first two weeks, we tried to deliver every day, but realized we just cannot manage it. Not only us, but also our operating systems weren’t ready for online orders and payment. Our program normally supports sit-down fine dining.
We started making many mistakes like forgetting boxes and sending incomplete orders, and this is not acceptable for our standards. Furthermore, after the first two weeks the sanitary situation got worse, so we also wanted to reduce the number of people in the kitchen to lower the risk of contamination.
So, we decided to ration our system and deliver only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This way, our customers can order in advance and it gives us more time to manage the orders and make sure we complete them.
We try very hard to control our costs. We have a lot of fridges in the kitchen and now we decided to keep only a couple working. We are also trying to find other sources of revenue, such as shipping community-sourced agriculture (CSA) packages and launching Bo.lan Grocer. Of course, this is partly because we still need this revenue, but we also want to keep supporting our farmers. Even though the business is slowed down and they’ve lost some of their customers, they won’t stop growing and fruiting. So we have to help them sell their products.
We use these products in our CSA Box, which is part of Bo.lan’s Grocer Box. This program aims to give other people access to the same quality products as we source from suppliers, including fish sauce, palm sugar, etc.
This situation also gives me a unique opportunity to send a message about food and also the environment. Through my way of cooking, I want to encourage organic and sustainable practices in every way I can, starting with the production of our ingredients, which has always been part of Bo.lan’s identity. But now this also reflects in the packaging that we use for deliveries.
We don’t want to use single-use plastic, so we send all our orders in enamel and stainless steel food containers. These are all washable and reusable, which is why we ask for a 500 THB deposit. Some customers are not happy with this, which is fine for me. I don’t want just any customer; I want the ones who understand my food and philosophy.
To sum it up, this outbreak has been a good learning opportunity for me and everyone in the staff.
- Are you aware of any support (government or otherwise) for women-owned businesses?
No. I probably didn’t explore it enough, either.
- How is it impacting women working in your business?
I don’t think it is impacting women that much.
- Your restaurant is on the frontlines now, delivering food. What role can women take in the COVID-19 response?
It might be an opportunity for women to step up and to lead the game. I heard women have lower chances of contracting the virus, so it’s time for women to stand up, to lead and to show their ability to manage and organize. Especially when you are a mum.
- How does the COVID-19 outbreak impact your family?
It does impact us a lot, because my kids actually study in Chiang Mai. Dylan and I will take turns to run the restaurant. For two weeks, I am in Chiang Mai with the kids and then we switch. Because of the outbreak, we had to bring the kids back to Bangkok. Since we are working on the new business model, we don’t have time to fully take care of them, so we leave them at their grandma’s house which is two minutes from ours in Bangkok.
The saddest thing is that Dylan’s parents have to come from Australia to see the kids, and they can’t anymore. Normally they come during Songkran and we’d close our restaurant to go and travel with them.
- What do you need the most now? What is an urgent issue that should be addressed?
Social distancing. I don’t think people get it. If people do not get it quickly, the whole country will be like Italy. I cannot believe how many people are still eating at street food stalls, and in the morning they are still crowded.
From a wider point of view, the other urgent issue is the waste: plastic waste from cooking, drinking and eating. It’s still an urgent thing that people should take just as seriously.
- What solutions are you coming up with?
I don’t think the situation’s under control. Just please stay at home, try to not socialize.
What everybody can start doing is to grow their own food. They’ll understand the real value of food and the amount of work behind it. The understanding of good-quality food needs to be reimplemented.
- Do you think that COVID-19 has more of an impact on women?
I think mentally, yes. In general, women are worried about a lot of things all the time. As mothers, we want to protect other people and we might get paranoid a lot easier. I believe this affects us mentally more as a female. You’re worried about your husband, kids, parents and grandparents who are getting older. The situation is very stressful. You can see it coming, but can’t plan fast enough so we have to improvise.
- What’s your advice for decision-makers?
I was very glad when the government announced the shutdown, as I was waiting for them to announce it. It was especially about social distancing. I felt that restaurants didn’t have enough guts to do it. It’s better for me and for my restaurants, even though we have to cover all the costs, but in terms of safety this is much better. If we were still open, we wouldn’t know where our customers came from. Since the beginning, the situation hasn’t been very safe, so it’s better for me to close down.
Now, decision-makers have to decide quickly and share the truth! There’s no point in hiding. They shouldn’t be afraid for the economy or a recession, because the system is going to collapse at some point anyway.
I am all for the total lockdown. I think it should have already been implemented since mid-February. I want the decision-makers to make sure that we have enough medical supplies for hospitals. The government has so much money from taxes, but the governmental hospitals don’t have enough supplies for COVID-19…
Regarding business, I do not think the government is really helping. Apart from a three per cent drop in the cost of electricity and a postponement of the taxes from March to June, no help is provided to us.
In Australia, for instance, landlords have had to waive the rental fees for six months. I called my landlord three weeks ago and could only get 30 per cent off. I don’t feel that the government cares about us.
- Is there anything that we did not ask, but you want to add?
This is a good situation for us to understand how fragile we are, and how much we have taken from this world.